Longmont names finalists for assistant city manager

LONGMONT -- Longmont will interview four assistant city manager candidates next week, including one from the same Texas city that City Manager Harold Dominguez came from.

The four are competing to be Longmont's first "external" assistant city manager, charged with overseeing economic development and services that interact directly with the public. That includes areas such as the airport, the senior center, the library and the museum.

The "internal" assistant city manager, Sandi Seader, began her position in August.

A total of 182 people applied for the job, more than twice the number that applied for Longmont's city manager job last year. Chief human resources officer Bobby King said the large pool was largely due to Longmont's reputation, the fact that assistant manager jobs don't come open very often, and Dominguez's own standing.

Shawn Lewis

"People know of him as a solid city manager," King said. "I think people want to be on his team. I think a lot of it is Harold Dominguez."

The candidates are:

Laura Fitzpatrick, the assistant city manager of Rio Rancho, N.M., population 87,521. She has held her current position since 2008; prior to that she was assistant to the city manager of Troy, Mich. (2001 to 2005) and then deputy city manager of Manassas Park, Va. (2005 to 2008).

Shawn Lewis, director of community and economic development for San Angelo, Texas, population 93,200. Lewis has worked at San Angelo since 2006 -- two years after Dominguez became city manager there -- and gained his current position in 2010. He was previously San Angelo's director of planning (2006 to 2007) and director of development services (2007 to 2010).

Adam Miles

Lewis has spent his entire career in Texas, working as an assistant to the city manager of Abilene (1999 to 2000), main street manager for Huntsville (2001-2003) and both business development coordinator and old town development coordinator for Lewisville (2003 to 2006).

Adam Miles, city manager of Hewitt, Texas, population 13,368. He has been city manager since 2008. He began his career as a disaster assistance employee for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (1996 to 1997) before working for Cleburne, Texas, as a planning and zoning project coordinator (1997 to 2000), assistant to the city manager (2000 to 2002) and assistant city manager (2002 to 2008). He briefly left the town for five months in 2000 to be a planner in North Richland Hills, Texas, a suburb of Fort Worth.

Angela Montgomery

Angela Montgomery, the former deputy city manager of East Point, Ga., population 33,712. Montgomery took the position in 2010 -- East Point's first black deputy manager -- and was briefly interim city manager after East Point's city council terminated the contact of Crandall Jones in December 2011. Her 20-year career began in Dayton, Ohio, where she was director of race relations for the Greater Dayton Christian Council (1992 to 1993), assistant housing manager for the Dayton Metropolitan Housing Authority (1994 to 1996), minority business assistance program coordinator (1996 to 1999), community development analyst (1999 to 2001) and financial services supervisor (2001 to 2005), as well as the acting revenue and taxation division manager (2003 to 2004). She then moved to Richmond, Va., as assistant to the chief administrative officer (2005 to 2006) and council policy analyst (2007 to 2009), before becoming assistant to the city manager of Dunedin, Fla. (2009 to 2010).

Residents can meet the four candidates at a reception starting 4 p.m. Monday in the civic center, 350 Kimbark St. The reception will run until 5 p.m. and will not include a question-and-answer session.

The four will be interviewed Monday and Tuesday.

The hire will be made by Dominguez; King said the a decision will be made late next week, after which the city will enter negotiations. The final hire may take weeks, King said.

Whoever gets the job will start no sooner than January.

"Trying to uproot your family between now and Christmas -- that's not going to happen," King said.

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